Lots of love for Sarah Palin

UPDATED & BUMPED: More than 10,000 went through the metal detectors for a McCain-Palin appearance in Colorado Springs and the campaign had 15,000 RSVPs.

UPDATE: Denver Post crowd photo:

Denver Post article:

In just the second day of campaigning together, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, gave a command performance of their convention week speeches to a crowd of more than 10,000 here. . . .
They began lining up as early as 5:30 a.m., even though doors for the event didn't open until 9 a.m.
By the time doors did open, traffic jammed for miles around the airport and the line of people waiting to get in wound for several hundred yards around large hangars.

Much more at the link, including quotes from a 2000 Al Gore volunteer who loves Palin so much she says she's "never been inspired by anyone else like this except Bobby Kennedy."

UPDATE II: Colorado resident Charlie Martin reports that he "signed up for tickets on Monday and didn't make the cut."

UPDATE III: AOSHQ headlined. Thanks.

PREVIOUSLY: Via Ann Althouse:

This photo from Cedarburg, Wisc., is by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Police said there were at least 12,500 who were admitted to the secure area and another 5,000 who did not fit.

So about 17,000 showed up -- in a town with an estimated population of 11,000. Did Tom Eagleton ever draw crowds like that?

UPDATE: The Associated Press:

Big crowds cheered the Arizona senator and Alaska governor as they made their post-convention debut in Democratic-leaning Wisconsin and Michigan . . .
Twelve hours after leaving the Republican convention in Minnesota, McCain
and Palin were cheered and applauded by a throng of thousands that wound down several streets of Cedarburg . . .
Later, they appeared before thousands who filled Freedom Hill Amphitheater in Michigan's Macomb County . . .

Politico:

Beginning with her announcement as his running mate last Friday in Dayton, Ohio, McCain has drawn more enthusiasm and packed in more people to his events
than at any time during his campaign. The two events Friday both drew about 10,000 people, comparable numbers to what the newly formed ticket saw last weekend.

Palin is clearly a phenomenon. Just by comparison, when I saw McCain three weeks ago in York, Pa. -- where he appeared with Tom Ridge, Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter -- he drew about 3,000.

UPDATE II: Gabriel Malor says MSM are purposely underreporting the size of McCain-Palin crowds.

Second-guessing Palin's pregnancy

All caveats on this chart criticizing Sarah Palin's decision to fly home and have her fifth baby in "a podunk hospital outside Wasilla."

This was linked by a "progressive" blogger who cites it as evidence of Palin's flawed "judgment." I remind you that, if it were up to the "judgment" of progressives, the pregnancy would have ended in abortion. I'm sure we're all so touched by progressive concern for the well-being of baby Trig.

It was Palin's fifth child. As a father of six, I can tell you that women who've been through a few childbirths become rather adept at judging the progress of labor. My wife used to work in the obstetric ward of a hospital. Any ob veteran will tell you that first-time mothers are notorious for false alarms or arriving at the hospital too early and then wallowing in labor for 36 hours, whereas more experienced moms are much better at waiting until the labor is well-advanced before going to the hospital.

There is not a scintilla of evidence that Trig was harmed because Palin returned home for the birth, and the continuing repetition of this bogus meme by the leftosphere is disgusting.

Frum goes 'big picture'

David Frum does the "public intellectual" gig in the New York Times:

As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us.

Frum is very subtle here, framing his argument in terms of bien-pensant concerns about (everybody sing along!) the growing gap between rich and poor, and the alleged stagnation of middle-class incomes. At the same time, he alludes en passant to the demographic factors that drive these trends:

[Fairfax County, Va. has] new arrivals speaking in 40 different tongues. . . .
. . . the immigration-driven expansion of the bottom. . . .
Prince William is also ground zero for the middle-class revolt against the Bush administration's easy immigration policies. An estimated 10 million migrants have entered the United States since 2000, at least half of them illegally, and few places in the United States have reacted more angrily than Prince William County. Last year, the Prince William Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to require the local police to check the immigration status of all arrested persons.
It's widely understood that abundant low-skilled immigration hurts lower America by reducing wages. As the National Research Council noted in its comprehensive 1997 report: "If the wage of domestic unskilled workers did not fall, no domestic worker (unskilled or skilled) would gain or lose, and there would be no net domestic gain from immigration." In other words, immigration is good for America as a whole only because -- and only to the extent that -- it is bad for the poorest Americans. Conversely, low-skilled immigration enriches upper America, lowering the price of personal services like landscaping and restaurant meals. And by holding down wages, immigration makes the business investments of upper America more profitable.

Those last two paragraphs alone ought to earn Frum favorable mentions from Steve Sailer and Peter Brimelow. The eminently respectable Frum boils down rather neatly for his bien pensant readership the cause of much populist resentment toward the Bush/McCain amnesty policy. Yet one can easily imagine the hypocritical glee of liberal readers who, despite their oft-trumpeted sympathy for the downtrodden, will nonetheless exult over any trend that results in the election of more Democrats.

Of course, Frum himself is part of the influx of Canadians who are driving down wages for hard-working American public intellectuals, so . . . .




South Park - Blame Canada - video powered by Metacafe

Sarah Palin rumor meltdown

Charlie Martin reports that his Sarah Palin rumors roundup is so popular it's melting his servers, so he's created a backup. I'm still looking for an authentic Sarah Palin bikini photo, by the way, and if anybody's got Joe Biden in a Speedo . . .

UPDATE: Charlie's Site Meter is rockin' today -- pushing toward 12,000 hits by 2 p.m. Ice down those servers, Charlie. Dude's been linked by Lucianne, NRO Corner, Blue Crab Boulevard, Politico, Free Republic, American Thinker . . .

UPDATE II: Oh, for crying out loud! A "progressive" blogger is claiming (on the authority of "Lucille, the waitress") that Palin referred to Obama as "Sambo." How freaking desperate can they get?

UPDATE III: This "Sambo" smear is now #54 in Charlie's list of Palin rumors. That there are no named sources for this allegation, and that the only remotely identified source is the stereotypically named "Shirley, the waitress" (e.g., "Hazel, the maid," "Jeeves, the butler," "Joe, the mechanic") is your first clue that it's bogus. The fact that Palin has been in public life for 15 years and never been accused of any such thing is your second clue.

Michelle Malkin says this progressive blog "comes off like a really, really bad Onion parody," and Allah is equally dubious. As Charlie notes, "Sambo" is a suspiciously dated reference, considering that Palin is only 44.

UPDATE IV: Allah sees Andrew Sullivan as the driving force giving a semblance of credibility to the Palin smears, and notes this Politico item:

[Reporter T.C.] Mitchell said the [Anchorage] Daily News received a call from a media outlet seeking the rules of the Miss Wasilla Pageant, presumably to determine whether Palin cheated when she won it in 1984.

In-freaking-credible!

UPDATE V: An Ace-o-lanche just crashed Charlie's server again.

UPDATE VI: Someone just e-mailed me what he purports to be a photo of Sarah Palin topless. Of course, it's a Photoshop job -- a highly skilled Photoshop, but as fake as the way-too-obvious porn-queen boob job of the way-too-young model on whose body Palin's head is superimposed.

UPDATE VII: Now the Weekly Standard has linked Charlie's page. But what will he say about the latest shocking scandal?

McCain, Obama to mark 9/11

E-mail from the McCain campaign:

Today, John McCain and Barack Obama issued the following statement on coming together to mark the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:
"On September 11, 2008, we will join together to mark the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero.
"All of us came together on 9/11 -- not as Democrats or Republicans -- but as Americans. In smoke-filled corridors and on the steps of the Capitol; at blood banks and at vigils -- we were united as one American family. On Thursday, we will put aside politics and come together to renew that unity, to honor the memory of each and every American who died, and to grieve with the families and friends who lost loved ones. We will also give thanks for the firefighters, police, and emergency responders who set a heroic example of selfless service, and for the men and women who serve today in defense of the freedom and security that came under attack in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania."

Shanksville is about a 2-hour drive from my house, so I might go up there for the memorial services Thursday.

Palin: No Tom Eagleton

I didn't actually know Tom Eagleton. Tom Eagleton was no friend of mine, but you, Sarah Palin, are no Tom Eagleton:

Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft seems to have been the first to invoke the Eagleton comparison, within hours of John McCain's announcement of his running mate, but she had plenty of company after Monday's news that Palin's teenage daughter is pregnant. Richard Gizbert of Huffington Post flatly pronounced Palin "the new Thomas Eagleton" and predicted that she would withdraw "within the next week or so." By Tuesday, Joshua Green of the Atlantic Monthly had an article online examining the comparison in detail.
Yet nothing in the attacks that Democrats or the media have made against Palin compares to the scandal that brought down Eagleton -- a hidden history of severe mental illness he hadn't disclosed to McGovern before his selection as running mate. And judging from the way Republicans have rallied to Palin's defense, it seems highly unlikely she will be bumped from the ticket.
Indeed, the spectacle of a media feeding frenzy over a working mother and her pregnant teenager seems to have produced a backlash that could have an effect quite the opposite of what Palin’s enemies originally imagined. She may yet turn out to be the anti-Eagleton -- that rare choice of a running mate who makes a positive difference in a presidential election.

That's from my latest article at Pajamas Media -- please read the whole thing.

How cool is Todd Palin?

John McCain has the ultimate spouse -- I mean, how cool is that, to marry the heiress to a beer distributorship? -- but Sarah Palin's married to the coolest dude in Alaska:

In Alaska . . . snowmobiling is the ultimate glamour sport, like Formula One racing in Europe. Todd Palin is a snowmobiling god. During this year’s 1,971-mile (3,172km) Tesoro Iron Dog race — which the First Dude has won no fewer than four times — he was flung 70ft (21m) from his machine when it hit a barrel hidden in deep snow. He broke his arm but completed the race, finishing fourth.

He's like the Richard Petty of snow.

UPDATE: Headlined at AOSHQ. Thanks.

New ad: Obama and Kwame

This ad is now running in Michigan:



The latest poll in Michigan showed Obama leading by only 2 points -- before Kwame resigned and pleaded guilty.

Fight the smears? Really?

I remember in June when Obama started ginning up the idea that the GOP was going to "smear" him -- and it was so obviously preparing the ground so that any criticism of him could be dismissed as a "right-wing smear."

But look at the real smears the Left has unleashed on Sarah Palin, the latest being the idiot claim that she busted up her husband's business partner's marriage. NOT.

Charlie Martin's got the complete guide to Sarah Palin rumors, just in case you're wondering what's true and what's not.

'The alleged state of Alaska'

Jim Treacher:

Embattled former beauty queen Sarah Palin* continued to wilt yesterday under the pressure of numerous fair, evenhanded media questions regarding the alleged state of "Alaska." Palin has claimed to be "governor" of the legendary northern land mass, which, while heretofore undiscovered by explorers, was once rumored to contain vast expanses rich with oil, gold, and "eski-mos."
Palin first made the "Alaska" claim during an Aug. 29 public appearance alongside elderly, mean-looking cancer victim John McCain. McCain, a white man with even whiter hair, has long publicly blocked efforts by Barack Obama, a youthful black man with a certain indefinable aura about him, to move into Obama's new house. Palin, also white-skinned, has been linked to the McCain offensive.
After four days of telling silence from the McCain camp, Palin finally deigned to reappear in public yesterday. In a followup press conference, Palin, who is a girl, lashed out at the media.

That there's funny, I don't care who you are. Read the whole thing, you racist swine.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Republican media strategery:

A senior McCain campaign official advises that, despite the gaggle of requests and pressure from the media, Gov. Sarah Palin won't submit to a formal interview anytime soon. She may take some questions from local news entities in Alaska, but until she's ready -- and until she's comfortable -- which might not be for a long while -- the media will have to wait.

Grrrrr. If she can't handle a press conference, how can you argue she's ready to be vice president?

This fear-based, defensive, curl-up-inside-your-shell posture toward the press is killing the GOP. It's insane: Treat the press like the enemy and then complain about media bias. Oh, I wish Tony Snow were still alive to explain to these "senior campaign officials" why this approach doesn't work.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: David Frum calls attention to this MSNBC clip where McCain campaign communications senior adviser Nicole Wallace ridicules the idea that Sarah Palin should speak to reporters:

Politicians cannot treat reporters like this. This has nothing to do with whether you like or dislike Jay Carney. I've seen what happens to Republicans (and Democrats) who cultivate an adversarial relationship with the press. As soon as a scandal or a gaffe or some other bad news hits, and you want to get your side of the story out there, guess what? Nobody's listening. And why should they? You never did them any favors, you treated them like scum, and now when you need a little help . . . hey, good luck with that, pal.

Ed Morrissey scoffs:

It’s not as if she’ll be able to avoid reporters while campaigning, especially in this day and age . . .

Oh, yeah? Go out on the road to cover the McCain campaign and see how much access to the candidate you get, Ed. I show up in Pennsylvania and tell 'em I'm from the American Spectator and it's like, "American What?" I show up and say I'm with Pajamas Media, and they're like, "Pajamas Who?"

Frankly, the Hillary campaign treated me a lot better, despite the fact that they understood I was essentially hostile (except in an "Operation Chaos" sort of friendly way). Two of the three times I covered Hillary on the trail, she gave press conferences, even though most of the questions were along the lines of, "Why don't you quit now, you stupid loser woman?" (That's almost a verbatim of the CBS News guy's question May 7.)

Hillary suffered badly in the later stage of the campaign because of her staff's earlier high-handed treatment of the press. It always -- always -- bodes ill for politicians when they treat reporters this way.

Flaming skull alert!

Ace warns that he's going to break out the infamous flaming skull if the rumor proves true that Code Pink disrupters got into last night's Republican convention using passes provided to them by MSNBC staff.

But if a blogger says it, it must be true.

Palin: Christofascist godbag?

Andrew Sullivan's readers are alarmed by the discovery that Sarah Palin is a Pentacostal, one of "the most hardcore Christianists":

But remember, if you bring up Rev. Jeremiah "G-- d--- America" Wright, that's a racist smear.

'Community organizer' is the new 'uppity'

At least, I think that's what David Plouffe was saying:

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago. . . .
Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies. . . .

(Yeah, Chicago's been an exclusive fiefdom of the Democratic Party for 70 years, so they've got plenty of experience with "failed policies.")

Community organizing is the foundation of the civil rights movement, the women's suffrage movement, labor rights, and the 40-hour workweek.

In other words, to mock "community organizers" is to be a racist, sexist, capitalist stooge who wants children working 60-hour weeks in dangerous coal mines.

Michelle Malkin explains the corruption of ACORN, the "community organizer" group to which the Obama campaign is joined at the hip. The Capital Research Center also has a good report on Obama's career as a "community organizer."

Gallup: Obama lead cut in half

Four days ago, Obama was at 50% and ahead by eight points in the Gallup daily tracking poll. Today, it's Obama 48%, McCain 44%:

Obama pulled into an eight-point lead at several points over the course of his convention. It now appears the Republican National Convention may be helping McCain to recoup some of his losses. . . .
Results, based on interviewing conducted Sept. 2-4, include just one day of interviewing conducted after Wednesday night's widely viewed acceptance speech by McCain's vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Most interviewing Thursday night was conducted before McCain's acceptance speech, so Gallup Poll Daily tracking results will start to reflect its impact in Saturday's report. The full impact of the GOP convention on voter preferences will not be known until Monday's report. . . .

In fact, to get a more accurate assessment, you'll have to wait until Thursday, Sept. 11, when Gallup's got three days of weekday polling in the hopper. Weekend poll results are erratic.

UPDATE: Guess this would be as good a place as any to link the latest Rasmussen poll showing that not only is Palin more popular than Joe Biden, she's also more popular than either Obama or McCain.

UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey notes that Palin "now has solid favorable majorities from men (65%)." You know why? Yeah. Bikini pics.

I've already had more traffic in 4 days of September than I had in all of August, which was a record month. And mostly because of my sarcastic humor my insightful commentary Sarah Palin bikini pics.

Readers don't even care if it's a bogus Photoshop composite. America loves Sarah Palin because of her compelling biography strong conservative record sexy body.

And I'm posting this bogus photo because I really care about the future of the country electing John McCain making money off this stupid blog.

Beyond satire

Andrew Sullivan says Sarah Palin's "past is so colorful, to say the least."

Ace is milking loads of laughter from that comment.

Backlash vs. US Weekly

US Weekly is reportedly losing subscribers because of its "Babies, Lies and Scandal" cover story about Sarah Palin:

"When Us went to print Monday night, it looked like the ticket was falling apart," says one magazine editor. "They went to print thinking Palin was dead in the water, and their mistake was thinking everyone who reads Us is a Democrat, when they're not. Readers are loyal, but the base of a political party is more loyal."

Here's the cover:

Compare to the Obama cover in June:

'Responsible and evenhanded'?

L.A. Times:

News executives Thursday tried to shake off the excoriations of the media emanating from the Republican National Convention, defending their coverage of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as responsible and evenhanded.

Make. Me. Laugh. You call parroting crackpot theories from DKos and recycling DNC talking points "responsible and evenhanded"? But wait, there's more:

The angry denunciations by Republican leaders spotlighted a dominant theme of the 2008 presidential campaign: the charge that the news media are a biased referee. It began in the primaries, when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign complained about sexist coverage, and has continued through the general election with accusations that the media are in Democratic nominee Barack Obama's sway.
Attacking the media is not a new political tactic, of course.

Notice that the subjects of these sentences are not the media, but the media's critics. There is no effort to explore what the media may have done to have deserve criticism. It's just the "political tactic" of "attacking the media" that is to be examined.

Election '08: The Hollywood pitch

OK, just imagine a screenwriter trying to pitch this story to a movie producer:

It's "Primary Colors" meets "The Distinguished Gentleman," "Top Gun" and "Legally Blonde," see?
All right, there's this half-Kenyan community organizer guy from Chicago. Well, he's actually from Hawaii and grew up in Indonesia, but he went to Harvard Law and now he's a senator from Chicago. Think Will Smith. Anyway, he wins the nomination by defeating the former First Lady. They call him the Messiah.
The other guy is a Navy pilot and Vietnam war hero who spent six years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, married to a beautiful blonde beer heiress. His nickname is Maverick.
So, anyway, it's Messiah vs. Maverick, OK? And then the Messiah has this huge speech with 90,000 people at a stadium and everybody's like, "Wow? How can you top that?" But then the Maverick decides that his vice-president is going to be -- wait for it -- a moose-hunting lady from Alaska! And her nickname is Barracuda.
But then, right after Maverick announces Barracuda as his running mate, guess what? Turns out her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant by her hockey-hunk boyfriend, so then . . .
What's that? ... Impossible? ... Whaddya mean they'll never believe it? Wait, no, I can rewrite it ...

Roll credits.

Amateur hour

At one point during last night's speech, the screen behind John McCain showed a mansion-looking building, causing a "huh?" reaction from viewers. As it turns out, the slide was supposed to show Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, but instead, the RNC person responsible for assembling the slideshow had gotten a picture of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, Calif.

It's laughable. Raising $47 million a month, and they can't hire competent staff.